Superman and Christ

According to a recent Yahoo MovieNews article many Christians are seeing obvious parallels between the new Superman movie and the Gospel of Christ. Certainly, the article says, the studios are not discouraging such comparisons (regardless of whether they are warranted) because they know that getting the "Christian population" behind a movie means more money for them.

When I read this article my first thought was that Superman was "the philosopher king." Let me explain. Plato, in his Republic, argued that the best possible form of government is one in which one person has all the power and is perfectly good and wise to use that power for the good of the whole community. He is the philosopher king. The worst possible regime is one in which a bad person has all the power, a tyrrany. He also says that the second-to-worst regime is a democracy, by the way.

I have argued that the form of a government is (in theory) essentially neutral and what really matters is the content of the character (as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. might say) of those who make decisions: the one king in a monarchy or the whole population in a democracy. It seems clear that it is more likely that one man can be perfectly good and wise and informed than a whole population.

Now enter superman. He doesn't seek political office in any official government sense, but he is the most powerful man on earth. He can do whatever he wants and no military technology on the planet will stop him. He always uses his power for good, as they used to say before the days of multi-culturalism: "Truth, Justice, and the American Way."

Of course, my theory is that both Plato and the writers of Superman were getting at something that is deeply engrained in us. The philosopher king is what we all really want because it is what God designed us for. Christ is the true philosopher king. He is the one who reigns perfectly with all power. His Kingdom was announced upon the earth through his ministry and began to break into this rebellious world through his resurrection. And it will be brought to completion at the resoration of all things to their original intent. The question for us becomes: will we as individuals and as communities live under his reign, under his Lordship, in his Kingdom or not?

Trinity Sunday

Well tommorow (6/11) is the first Sunday after the Pentecost which is traditionally known as "Trinity Sunday," which one bitter minister once remarked is the only major church holiday dedicated to a doctrine rather than a biblical event.

In an age when theology is often allowed to be fuzzy, perhaps because it isn't always obvious to us how it relates to our experiences (the really important part of the faith...right?) the Trinity is a doctrine that is often ignored and sometimes attacked.

Some argue that the Early Church was not Trinitarian until the Council of Nicea at which they formulated the Nicene Creed (which, by the way does not mention the word "trinity"). This is simply false. The earliest Christians (like Paul or Peter) assigned divinity to Christ and to the Holy Spirit with the Father while maintaining that there was but one God. Though the word "Trinity" and some of the nuances of the doctrine developed later, the basic belief it describes was already in place. This is why the Nicene Creed was and still is accepted by virtually all Christians.

Of course this doctrine is crucially important because it identifies the God that we worship, the God that we put our trust in. All other Christian teachings flow naturally from it. The Trinity is what distinguishes Christians from all other religious folks: we worship the One and only God who has one divine being, a being that is shared by three co-equal divine Persons existing eternally ("from everlasting to everlasting") in a relationship of self-giving ("agape") love. God's nature is relational. God is a "community" of persons existing in perfect unity of love. Our God did not create the universe because he was "lonely," but rather because this was consistent with his nature as self-giving-love-relational Being. The decision to redeem us is rooted in this same reality, in God's very self-giving-love-relational nature.

My belief in the Trinity is also my reason for being adamant about traditional/natural marriage. I belief the marital act is designed by God to be a reflection, or icon, of the Trinity. In fact I think marriage (sex) has almost all of the elements of a sacrament (Scott Hahn's books are very good at this point). It is (or can be) a physical and spiritual union of persons, living within a covenant relationship, in self-giving love that brings both joy and the potential of new life out of the union. Surely God has given us a picture of the Trinity in nature just as he has done in so many ways with the resurrection. This is why I am critical of extra-marital sex, homosexual practice, and most especially of divorce.

The reality of the Trinity should give form to our prayer life, our worship, and even our acts of service. This was one reason I was initially attracted to liturgical Churches that used form/prescribed prayers instead of only made-up-on-spot prayers. The prayers I found in say The Book of Common Prayer and The United Methodist Hymnal were often much more Trinitarian in form and content than "free" prayers turned out to be. They certainly didn't use phrases like "Father God" (the Name of God Almighty) as repititious "filler" while the prayer leader thought of what to say next (that is a little pet peeve of mine).

Anyways, I did not set out to write a commentary on marriage or on prayer but as I said all of Christian teachings will be seen to be naturally rooted in or connected to the Trinity once we get a handle on what that word means. Christianity.com ran some articles this week on the subject: the first one by a Baptist asserts that the doctrine of the Trinity is essential to Christianity; another short one simply lays out some of the Scriptural reasons that the Council of Nicea came to authoritatively and definitively decree (by the grace of the Holy Spirit) that the Church worships the Trinity as God; and finally a longer article (that ends with a polemical flourish against all the heretics) called Loving the Trinity.

I have been told that even among liberal "mainline" Christians there is a current revival of interest (and belief) in the Trinity (and I believe it too based upon my seminary experience), and I hope this trend will continue in all quarters of the Church, especially since so many Christians I know (including myself in times past) believe in a heresy called Modalism.

While it is true that every Sunday is a celebration of the Trinity (just as every Sunday is a celebration of the Resurrection), I am glad that the Church in her wisdom set aside one to focus on this most important teaching, and I hope many of us will.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:

One God, now and forever. Amen.

Free Book!

Well sorta. You can read Methodist Bishop Will Willimon's (somewhat old, but still good) book Rekindling the Flame: Strategies for a Vital United Methodism. I am a fan of Bishop Willimon, so I encourage others to read his stuff.

Could Evangelical Christianity end Communism?

Some think that Evangelical Christianity could play a major role in ending Chinese communism. While it is certainly too soon to make any hard-and-fast judgments about that, I think it is important to remember that Communism, while "atheistic," is in fact a guiding ideology or worldview that demands the total subscription of its adherents. In other words it is a "religion," as this article reminds us (though the Post-Enlightenment notion of "religion" was intended to sheild "secular" religions from that label) and it is important for us to remember that.